


The dead men who would not stay dead

by Rulerofthefakeempire



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Angst, Bucky remembers a little, Homelessness, M/M, Sam being the guardian angel he is, The metal arm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-25
Packaged: 2018-03-02 20:31:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,644
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2825195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rulerofthefakeempire/pseuds/Rulerofthefakeempire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One night, in the middle of the beginning of a thunder storm, Bucky Barnes showed up on Sam Wilson's door step, cold, wet, alone and scared. This is what happens thereafter.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

The rain pattered quietly on the windows, undisturbing in its presence. Occasionally there was the odd rumble of thunder in the distance, like small children playing in the thick, black clouds that hung over the suburban landscape. It was peaceful, like the rain had put a warm blanket over everything, muffling all the noises and all the worries. The air smelt like moisture and tears, though not actual tears, just the metaphorical ones. Nice ones. 

People stared out their windows, people of all ages, genders and ideas of the world. Some of them had things to do, some of them didn’t. Some of them thought that rain was a good idea, some of them didn’t. All of them looked out of their windows and thought about where they were in life. Most of them felt a little depressed after that. 

Mr Sam Wilson was one of those people, staring out windows, a book forgotten in his lap, though he wasn’t very interested in it anyway. Instead he stared, like most people did and tried to remember where Natasha was. Sometimes, when she was bored and not on a mission, Natasha, in all her scary Russian glory, would come over and they would drink coffee and be normal for an hour or too. Then they would talk, very earnestly, about the weather and Natasha would tell him where she as off to next. Whenever she came over, he always felt kind of trusted. Sometimes she would even bring Barton and they would hazard the occasional joke.

It was a good relationship. 

Steve, after the whole Winter Solider debacle, was still on his wild goose chase, but, quite frankly, Sam figured that if this Bucky fellow didn’t want to be found, he probably wasn’t going to. Steve’s persistence though was… heartbreaking. 

The rain started up again, harder now. It was a Thursday night in November and the cold season was just beginning. Soon it would start getting colder and colder and he would start taking blankets down to the local shelters and everyone in the area would seriously consider going into hibernation, because, goddammit, winter! It was a fairly cold night tonight and he pitied anyone who was out there, but really, it was New York, there were so many sleeping under dumpsters tonight that it was horrifying. He rubbed a hand over his face and tried not to think about it. 

He jumped awkwardly in his seat by the window when he heard the doorbell ring. For a moment he couldn’t quiet tell what to do about it. Obviously he should go open it and let whoever it was in, because they must’ve been freezing. Only he didn’t. He waited a moment until it was rung again and Sam jolted out of his trance. He didn’t know what that was, just a feeling, just a sinister feeling swimming darkly in the pit of his stomach. He bit his lip and rushed towards the door. Unlike most more reasonable people he didn’t have a peephole. He was one of those few people who just opened doors and saw who was standing there without a sneak preview. 

As soon as he opened the door his heart leapt into his throat. The last time they had seen each other hadn’t even been for very long, actually it had been nothing, but a fleeting moment amidst the violence. Even so he was the same. Even without his mask, or the smudges of black around his eyes he was so easy to recognise. Sam’s first instinct was to run away as fast as humanly possible. His second instinct was to call Steve and yell into it for a little while and then throw the phone at the man standing on his porch. He ignored both of these instincts and instead only stiffened and wondered if he was about to die.

The man that Steve fondly referred to as Bucky was soaked to the bone and his nose was slightly red, though Sam didn’t notice that. He did notice though the shining of the man’s left fingertips that confirmed his identify. He did note with some confusion that instead of a weapon at his side one hand was stuffed into the pocket of his wet hoodie and the other hung glumly by his side. 

For a moment the two just stared at one another, a small puddle slowly forming at Bucky’s feet and Sam was slowly going into cardiac arrest. So far, so good. Sam willed the other man to speak, to explain the situation, it get across his mission so that they were on level ground and he could act accordingly. 

There was something heartbreakingly sad about Bucky Barnes. Something that he couldn’t quiet put his finger on. The something didn’t make him harmless, or any less dangerous, it just made him sad. Something in the way that his eyes were slanted downwards and his mouth seemed to be in constant state of regret. Something in the way that his whole expression kind of… drooped. 

Bucky blinked at him and he blinked back. 

“Do you…” Bucky began, though he paused hallway through as if he had to remember how to speak. “Do you have any bandaids?” Bucky had the sort of voice that pleaded with you even when he wanted nothing at all. It was all gratey, like it was constantly fighting with the air for way of passage and it was always exhausting. 

Sam’s expression became confused once again.  
 “Maybe I do.” Sam looked at the tall man who just blinked at him, his face stony and drawn together. “Are you going to try and kill me?” For a moment Bucky stared at him, deeply alarmed and then he looked a little horrified, and then he just looked sad and then he look like nothing at all. 

Bucky shook his head. 

“I don’t think so.” Thunder sounded and Sam stared at the man. “I just need some bandaids… and a screwdriver.” For a moment the Winter Solider looked so uncomplicated, so decisive. He knew what he wanted, he knew what he needed. He needed to get out of the rain, he also needed bandaids, and also he needed a screwdriver. They were the necessities. He hadn’t expected anything in such a long time. He never expected anything. He was just a person, why didn’t people understand that?

Sam looked at him for a few moments, carefully calculating the risk involved in letting one of the most highly wanted men in America, who had honestly tried to kill him into his house. By this point he had noticed the ragged state the man was in. The bags hanging from his eyes, the way he favoured his right leg to his left, the way that his nose was pink and his lips were blue. 

“Are you sure that you’re not going to try and kill me?” Sam wasn’t quite sure what to think. There was some compelling evidence of mind washing going on in what used to be Hydra and everyone was almost certain that it had been Bucky to drag Steve out of the water, but that didn’t mean he still wasn’t a homicidal maniac. Of course he didn't look like a homicidal maniac, he just looked… wet.

Bucky shook his head and Sam shrugged his shoulders. What harm could it do? He could be murdered, obviously, but he was willing to ignore that factor for the moment. 

“Come on in, I got a first aid kit in the kitchen.” Sam gestured to him as he turned around, urging him forward and out of the cold. Bucky looked hesitant for a moment before following him inside the warm house and politely closing the door. Sam didn’t turn around as they walked down the corridor, call it an act of faith. 

They turned into the kitchen where the past week’s dishes were stacked up in the sink and the smell of a previously eaten meal still hung in the air. Sam gestured in a friendly, not entirely clear sort of way to one of the chairs at the dining table and Bucky took that as his queue to sit down. He wasn’t quiet sure what he was meant to do while sitting down so he just began to braid his hair over his shoulder to give his fingers something to do and to get the hair off is neck. His silver fingers were slow and clumsy, there was too much water in the cables, he needed to get in there and sort it out, but he didn’t have a screwdriver. 

“So where have you been this past year?” It was a casual question, and it didn’t really even demand an answer. It was just something help fill up the space between them, just enough that it was comfortable. Sam was going though cupboards and Bucky was staring down at his hands. 

“Around.” Bucky answered gruffly. "I went to shelters, the people were nice." He said it as if it confused him, as if it confused him that people were capable of being nice to him if he didn't do something in return. He remembered being given a slip of paper and a dirty fifty dollar note by a stranger when he was on the streets one night. All it had on it was an address and a few kind hearted words. 

He had gone to the address only to find it was a place for people like him. People with no money or luck. They had given him a bed and a few pieces of clothing and food every night. In return he would teach the young children in the shelter about the world, sometimes he would teach them a few words from the languages he knew and sometimes he would read them stories while their parents were off working. He had liked it there, but then people had started getting suspicious of him, of his arm, of his dog tags from World War II and he had had to move on. 

He would like to go back there at some point, read more stories to the little ones.

He didn't think they would welcome him back, but perhaps he would only go for a little while, just to read some books and eat a meal. 

Sam turned around with a small white box with a few words and a large red cross on it. He knew what that meant, just like in his day. He didn't remember much from "in his day", he would get flashes every now and then and sometimes he would smell something or see something and a memory would fade into focus. A memory of a man who was the man on the bridge just... littler and… sicker. And down right frailer as well.

He remembered a tiny apartment, he remembered badly held together fights in alleyways. He remembered all sorts of tiny details, useless details like a white box with a dusty red cross on it. 

"Where are you hurt?" It seemed like such a silly question him and his first instinct was what to say that he wasn't hurt at all. Usually if he was hurt he would deal with it himself, he would steal bandages and creams. He didn't want to ask for help from those people, he didn't know what they would do to him. 

"I have a blister." He knew for a fact that he didn't have a blister, he was sure he had several. He had had socks at one point, but he had seen this woman, even dirtier than he was, and she had had a child clutched to her bosom. He had paused in his walk through the night, the woman hadn't looked him in the eye so his own eyes had wandered. He had seen the baby's toes and he had noted with a frown that they were blue. The baby was too cold. Without thinking he had sat down next to the woman and her baby and untied the lasses of his boots. When he was done he had taken off his relatively clean and relatively warm socks and gently pulled them up to the baby's thighs, put his shoes back on, before moving on, muttering a hushed "goodbye". 

He slowly began to pull at his laces now only capable of using his human hand. Too much water in the wires, it just hung limply by the chair. 

"Do you have a screwdriver?" He didn't look up from his boot laces, he only fiddled with his less nimble, human fingers. He didn't really know this person, barely even knew his name, but he had seen him around the shelter a few times, though he always hid. He hadn’t wanted to bring that up, he hadn't wanted to be kicked out. 

Somehow he managed to kick off his military boots, but when he looked up he was alone in the kitchen. He knew that it was only a matter of time before the man came back and it wasn’t like he was going to be moving about anytime soon. He was in enough pain as it was. He just stared about for a moment. He didn’t know how the man on the bridge managed. Everything was so different. The only modern things he knew about were weaponry and he… he just didn’t want to go near that. 

He sighed deeply and attempted to open the latch on the little white box, barely managing to clip it open with one hand. Inside were a few bandages and a few bottles of things that seemed hard to pronounce. Bucky searched for a few bandaids. He found a few nestled in-between a box of army grade bandages and a bottle with odd smelling green liquid in it, though he found that he couldn’t really open them. 

When the man came in he had one stuck between his teeth, half ripped to shreds and his metal arm trying desperately to grip onto it, only to miss it entirely. The two made eye contact, one of them seriously considering taking off his arm, the other awkwardly holding a little metal screwdriver. 

“What is wrong with you?” The man made a face and Bucky made another face in return. He was having a bad day. He was wet and cold and his arm was broken and his feet had blisters on them and his nose was running and he was cold and he kept on having flash backs to the war and all the terrible things he had done. It was just so… screwed up! 

“My arm has water in it, I need to drain the cables.” He said it frankly, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. To him it sort of was. The man’s eyebrows scrunched together, but still he handed the tool to the other man and sat down in the chair next to him. Bucky barely even noticed when the man pulled one of his feet into his lap. 

For a few moments there was nothing, but a deeply horrified silence as Sam stared at the man’s cracked and blistered foot. How far had he walked? Why the hell wasn’t he wearing any socks? What an idiot. Then Sam began on the bandages and the antiseptic and the general cleaning of the wounds. 

“Jesus.” Every few moments he would crossly shake his head or Buckyst feet would twitch with pain and the long haired man with his braided hair would glare at him. Bucky slowly peeled off his hoodie as the man played with his feet and then took the muzzle out of the pocket of the jacket he had gotten from Hydra. He laid it gently on the table. 

“Why do you still have that?” Bucky looked up to see the man’s horrified face, eyes staring at the mask as if it was a bomb. Was it not obvious? 

“It keeps my face warm.” It seemed fairly easy to assume to him. Why else would he wear it? The man sighed and shook his head, leaving Bucky to only shrug and go back to his work, taking off his wet leather jacket, leaving him only in a red, sodden t-shirt. Leaving his arm exposed to the view of the man and, yes, he did see him looking.

Bucky was fiddling with the screwdriver, unscrewing a small, grated panel at his wrist. Once he had he laid it down on the table and it flattened immediately. Where the panel had once been was a small touch pad that lit up happily and coldly at the same time. Before, when he had been under Hydra’s control, the panel had lit up and the word ‘HYDRA’ with the logo and then it would display the time, temperature, location and a few other things. Somehow he had managed to persuade a street technician to reprogram it. Now he got internet(he had no idea what that was, but he figured it was good), something called SatNav and it also told him the exact details of his surroundings. He liked it a lot better now, now when it lit up it said hello to him. 

With a few taps he came to a page with a keypad of numbers. Tapping a few of them in a gentle mechanical tick took place, filing the air and letting his metal arm loosen in its socket. With a few gentle prods his arm came free from what was left of his shoulder. 

He was fairly indifferent to his metal arm. He didn’t really like it, he didn’t really dislike it. He had just come to accept that it was him, it was a different type of him, but it was still him. He didn’t particularly like it when it came off because then, well, then he didn’t have a left arm and that was a little disarming. Yes, he did just make that joke. And, no, he was not ashamed. 

He held his metal elbow and peered into the cable compartment where it connected to his shoulder, water sloshed around. Something annoying about literally having a metal arm was that whenever it got wet water would leak in through the grates that allowed him to move and he would have to clean it and drain it and really it was just a huge hassle.

“Man,” Bucky looked up at the man who had his half bandaged feet in his lap. Coincidentally this was also the person he had tried to kill about a year beforeg. “You just took off your own arm, do you know how wicked that is?” No, for the record, he didn’t. He also didn’t know why the word ‘wicked’ was necessary in the sentence. 

Bucky made a confused face at him. 

“Do you have anywhere I can pour this out?” He asked as pleasantly as he could, he didn’t know how else to do it. He didn’t know how to be good anymore. He didn’t know how to be healthy or safe. All he knew was that he wanted to drain his arm and be on his way. Before the man from the bridge could get here. 

Sam shrugged, gently took the metal from him and stood, though Bucky was reluctant to let go. It was his arm. Sam stared at the arm as he headed over to the sink. He poured out the sloshing water. He looked down into it and saw the water droplets clinging to the wires and cables and screws. 

He never, in his life, thought that he would be looking down someone’s arm. It was a weird situation. Roughly he turned the arm upside down and some more water dribbled reluctant out, no wonder his arm wasn’t working. You’d think that one of the most high-tech pieces of gear would be waterproof at least. Apparently the Winter Solider didn’t go on many underwater missions. 

“Do you think we should hang it somewhere? To drain?” Sam turned around, but it was no use. He could talk all he wanted, nobody was listening. The man, the man that had destroyed so many things, who could make whole governments fall, the one armed bandit who had screwed it all up. The Winter Solider, The Winter solider had fallen asleep at Sam Wilson’s dining room table and Sam was awkwardly holding his arm. 

“Damn,” he muttered.

Slowly he moved quietly around Bucky. He moved in the least disturbing manner he could. First he went and hung up the arm in the laundry with a towel underneath it. And then he came back to the kitchen and finished with Bucky’s feet and then he paused considering what to do next.  
He stared at the man.

He didn’t know what to do. He didn’t even vaguely know what to do. To be precise he had no idea what to do and it made him want to panic. He knew that Bucky wasn’t a villain, he was just a mislaid victim who had trusted the wrong people because he hadn’t had anything else to go on. And now he was sleeping with pure and unfathomable exhaustion, because he was finally warm and it was his instinct to do so. Warmth + exhaustion = sleep. It was simply, but they both knew it wasn’t.

Sam tried to think clearly. If this was just another person, just someone who was scared and alone and had been thrust into a brand new age that he knew nothing about, what would he do to help? He… he would get him some clothes. And somewhere more comfortable to sleep. And something to eat and drink. That was what he would do if Bucky wasn’t Bucky.

So thats what he did. 

He went up to his room and gathered the biggest, warmest, most comfortable clothes he had and then he gently undressed The Winter Solider while he snoozed on the inside of Sam’s his arm. There was something uncharacteristically adorable about a grown, 95 year old super solider with his cheek resting against another man’s arm while he’s too tired to every dress himself. 

Adorable and so deeply saddening. 

Sam quietly redressed him in a large sweater that went over his fingertips and soft track pants with “CAPTAIN AMERICA” written up the leg in bold, red letters. And then, with gentle grunts he hauled the taller man over to the sofa, laid him down and covered him in blankets. He needed to call Steve, he had to call Steve. 

This goose chase couldn’t go on any longer.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky has a cold and this leads to a few bumps in the road. Also, there's a sassy ghost around every corner.

Dark eyes looked at him, they burned into him, analysing him, attempting to recognise any threat. They peered out from under dark, tangled hair and through a haze of anxiety and eery calm. The owner of the eyes, barely even breathing from under his kingdom of pillows simply stared at him. His hair sat atop his head like a mountain of fluff and tangles and the eyes still managed to look threatening, like those of a cornered animal. Heavy bags sat under the eyes and half of their face was concealed by a huge pillow.

They stared at the man in the living room, who had been moving past in the corridor, frozen in the middle of some obnoxious sentence. Bucky didn’t know what he had been saying, but he had been awaken by the noise. He couldn’t help it, he felt threatened and scared. In his defence it was quite easy considering that there was a ghost standing three feet away from him, he had no idea where he was and the ghost was literally holding his arm. 

“You’re dead,” he stated gravely, eyes unmoving and his voice muffled by the pillow pressed against his lips. The ghost blinked at him. The ghost looked a little different from the last time they had met. Less thin, more muscular. And his facial hair had moved around. It was undeniable though. This was a ghost, or a vision, or both. 

The ghost blinked at him again, still stuck mid stride. 

“Yeah… not so much?” In his voice there was a question and in the question there was a different question and then there were two other questions within that question. Somehow the ghost was almost as witty in death. 

“No,” the eyes stated. “You’re dead. I should know, I killed you.” He wasn’t proud of it, he didn’t even know if it had been him doing the thinking when he had done it. It was 1991 and it was the first day he had made a decision for himself. He had killed Howard and his wife They had crashed, they had gone up in fiery flames. 

He had been sent then to kill the boy, left at home, but he never had. He had never killed a child before, but he knew of them. One of the engineers had left his boy with him for a few hours while they waited for a new mission. The boy had played with him, he had been around three and very excited to be with his father at his work. He had liked the child, he remembered vaguely. 

And the next week he had been sent to kill one. 

He remembered it clearly, it was crisp behind his eyes. The way the boy had been in tears, the way that he had already figured out that he was going to die and that terrified him. He had been greeted at the door and taken solemnly into the house. He had been so confused. This child with tears streaming down his face, a running nose and the insane courage too welcome his killer into his house. Bucky hadn’t made any violent action as yet, an old fashioned curiosity had burned through him, something he couldn’t remember feeling, yet still felt familiar. 

The boy had lead him to what Bucky supposed had been his bedroom and pushed a green, hardback book up towards him. It was old and the pages were frayed. Smudges of grease were splayed across the old green cover. 

“Read.” The boy had stated softly. Bucky knew how to read, it came to him naturally. He liked it as well, sometimes he would steal books from studies. He liked it.   
Bucky had stared at the boy for a few moments, registering the question, or perhaps the demand. Bucky had taken the book from him and sat down heavily on the bed, unclipping the muzzled over his mouth so that it hung from one of his ears, flipping through the book. 

The Hobbit. 

Tolkien?

He looked up and the boy was looking at him sadly. He knew what was going to happen after the book. He understood and accepted it and that in itself was heart breaking. Bucky had smiled, just a little, it was his instinct. Leaning back on the head board of the bed he had gestured for the boy to come and sit next to him and then he had begun.

“In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit…” 

He had kept saying one more chapter until the book was finished, his voice was hoarse, the child was curled tightly into him, under his arm and it was beginning to rain. Before he had left, before he had done the only good thing he could remember ever doing. He wrote the boy a note and it went something like this:

Dear Boy,   
I am sorry… for coming here tonight, and… I am sorry for your parents.   
The book was beautiful and I hope that you will keep  
it with you for as long as you live.   
As we part ways I wish to give you this one  
piece of advice that I wish I was able to follow.   
You are young and when you are a hundred you will still be young.   
Never do what you don’t want or need to do.   
If you need to do it, do it. If you want to do it, do it.   
Anyone who says otherwise doesn’t understand what it is to be human.   
With dear hope for where you go in life,  
The Winter Solider. 

And then he had left and the day had ended quietly. 

The ghost blinked at him again and Bucky wondered how quickly he would be able to grab   
his arm and run out without anyone being sent to hospital. He didn’t like ghosts, he didn’t like the visions that never stopped haunting him. All he had wanted was to fix his arm and a few bandaids. How did he end up in clothes that were too big for him in on a couch, smothered in pillows and blankets, and staring at a ghost?

The ghosts face suddenly became clear, like he suddenly understood what was going on. 

“Oh, I see. You’re going all ‘oh, you look so much like your father, dearie’ on me. I know who you are and I don’t think you know who I am.” He paused, thinking about his statement deeply with a look of vague horror on his face. “Someone doesn’t know who I am.” He muttered before wandering off, still gripping Bucky’s metal elbow. 

As soon as the ghost left the room Bucky flung himself into action. He launched from his next, too hot and too cold. His mind felt numbed and dull with fever. Too many nights in the rain, too many nights of giving away various pieces of clothing. His head was pounding with a dull, dizzying throb. 

He searched within himself for the agility that usually came so easily. He tried to get to his feet, but he stumbled, his only arm trying to steady himself. He still ended up splayed across the carpet, he didn’t remember falling, but apparently it had happened. They leg of the sofa swayed in front of him as he struggled like a wounded animal to his feet. Somehow he found a doorway to lean on. He was so exhausted, he just needed to leave. He needed something to drink, he needed his arm. 

He needed to feel human again. 

He closed his eyes and breathed in slowly. It was meant to be calming, but all it did was rouse a coughing fit from his chest. The sound was bad, all wet and panicking. His eyes watered and his lungs burned like acid. 

He needed to sit down. 

He looked up wearily, his breathing strained and tenuous, he felt scared. He was scared. The ghost stood in a doorway opposite his own. He wasn’t smirking, nor was he frowning. If anything he just looked uncomfortable, conflicted perhaps. He was no longer holding his arm at least. Bucky barrelled past him on unsteady feet, hoping that where he was headed was the kitchen. 

His feet hurt. 

Vaguely he saw the shine of his metal arm sitting on the dining room table. Arm, good. Exhaustedly, he sat down on heavy will, grabbing mindlessly for his own limpb. His head was getting more and more painful. He was struggling to breath. He took another deep breath, more careful this time and then another. He needed to control himself. He needed to think clearly. 

Quickly he took off one of the fingers like the lid of a pen revealing a small screwdriver. He had been unable to use the built in screwdriver the night before because of the water damage. He couldn’t take out the fingers if it was wet. Sleepily and dazedly he unscrewed the panel. He needed to get his arm back on. He needed to… he needed to…

“Woah, woah there, Go-Go-Gadget! Hold your horses, I still need to look at that.” The ghost came from behind him, talking like it was his arm that Bucky had stolen. 

“Bugger off, Ghost.” He was well aware, by this point, that this man before him was not Howard Stark. Bucky squinted his eyes up at the boy. “I thought you’d be taller, Ghost.” His voice was soft, barely even there. Just a small muttering of the soul. His eyes glazed over.

The boy he had once spared stare down at him. 

He was going to pass out. 

The arm slipped from his grip and it clattered to the floor. 

His mind went numb and when he woke up next, somebody was offering him warm porridge and antibiotics. Also, he was on a cloud. 

….

When he awoke he first thought that he was at a hospital, but then the bed was too comfortable to be a hospital bed, and in hospital they didn’t give you your own room. Everything looked remarkably like the inside of a magazine. It was pristine, unstained by actual personality. 

He groaned, staring at the ceiling. He didn’t know where he was, again. And his head hurt. And he still didn’t have his arm. And he’s tummy hurt. And he was… so hungry. 

“James?” It had been a long time since anyone had called him that. He turned his head a little to the right in an attempt to see the speaker. “Good morning James, would you like to have something to eat?” A long, slender man sat in an armchair beside the bed. His hair was black like obsidian and shoulder length. His eyes were emerald and concealed. He wore jeans and a turtle-neck sweater and, of all things, he looked calm. He looked like a single, solitary rock refusing to move in a great river. He looked still. 

“Who are you?” Bucky croaked, a sick feeling curling in his stomach. It came with not knowing where he was every time he woke up.

The dark haired man smiled at him. 

“I am the person offering you food, but if you are referring to my name, I am Loki Laufeyson and I have been looking after you.” Loki Laufeyson, that sounded familiar, but he didn’t know where from. “Now, do you want something to eat or not?” 

Wearily Bucky sat himself up, the man named Loki reaching over him with another pillow to put behind his back. When he settled into a sitting position Loki passed him a porcelain bowl filled with stuff that looked like porridge. As the bowl changed hands their fingers slipped across one another. Loki’s touch was cool, inhumanly cool. 

It didn’t really bother Bucky that the man wasn’t human. In his experience the best people usually weren’t human. Plus if they didn’t attack you right off the bat that usually meant that they weren’t planing on doing it in the future. Humans, on the other hand, were entirely untrustworthy. 

He could only wonder what the other man was. 

He rested the warm bowl in his lap and raised the spoon to his lips. It might of looked like porridge, but it most certainly wasn’t. It was too sweet and oddly alcoholic. He jolted as the first spoonful went down. The man, who had tucked his hands back into his lap where a book lay, smiled. 

“I apologise for not warning you before. I have put a few of my own healing properties into the oats, it is not poisoned.” Briefly Bucky wondered how a non-human being could be British. Another mystery add to the pile. Bucky nodded and continued to eat, it wasn’t bad once you got used to the taste, and he was all for healing properties, they were his favourite things. 

“Where am I?” His words were muffled by the food and the man smiled again. 

“Stark Tower, New York. Anthony brought you to me, he was worried for your health.” He guessed that “Anthony” was his ghost. Great, he simply loved it when people took matters into their own hands. Screw healing properties, intrusion was now his favourite thing. “How are you feeling?” Loki inquired as he let his bowl rest, empty in his lap. His immaculate features were expressionless, though curious was his stance. 

“Better, much better. Thanks.” Bucky leaned back, he was still tired, but he could feel his body healing as it should. It felt nice to say the least.

“I’m glad.” The man smiled again, but then he became serious. “Just so you know, Steven is out side the door right now, pacing furiously. I told him he shouldn’t be here when you woke up, but he wishes to see you still.” Steven? The man from the bridge. The man from the bridge was here, he was just out side the door. It felt like a rock had just swung into him or like the breath had been sucked out of his whole body. He didn’t know what he would say. He didn’t know what he would do. The prospect seemed terrifying, he would probably run.   
He slid his eyes towards Loki, he seemed sympathetic. 

“Is there anyway you can get me past him?” He looked hopefully at the man who smiled sadly. He knew the answer instantly. 

“Normally, yes, but… you see, that man, does not trust me.” Shiftily he tugged down the fabric of his sweater to reveal a silver collar around his neck. Bucky’s eyes widened with horror. 

“They bound you?!” He had heard of it before, humans bounding those that they saw a risk. He though it was grotesque. Barbaric. He disapproved so much it began to bring back headache, it started to bring back memories. 

Loki waved his hands at him as if trying to cool flames. He looked scared.

“Please, James, be quiet. Please. If you shout th-” he was cut off by loud banging on the door. 

“Loki, you let me in right now or so help me god, I will tear you apart!” It was definitely the man from the bridge, that ridiculously noble voice, like he was always so certain of who he was. Loki’s eyes flicked to the door and Bucky heard a foreign curse slip from his lips. 

Bucky wanted to be paying attention, but he was too angry. 

“They bound you?! That’s horrible, despicable!” From outside the door Loki was sure that his yelling was only muffled screams, so he wasn’t quite surprised when the next minute the door was being thrown open and he was being thrown out of his chair. He landed on the floor with a thud, he barely had a moment to reassert himself before he was picked up again and something was begin pushed into his neck. Goddammit Thor, the well behaviour serum filled his veins and his vision blurred, while the other blond man struggled with the man that Anthony had brought in. 

Bucky struggled furiously in the man from the bridge’s grip. Somehow he managed to over power him with, literally, one arm. He launched himself to where the other blond man was laying down Loki on the floor. They had drugged him somehow. Bound him and drugged him, they didn’t understand what they were doing to him. They didn’t understand how inhuman they were being and it enraged him. 

Bucky cradled the dark haired man in his arms, in horror he stared down at him,staring at the hundreds of little puncture wounds on his neck and the bruises the collar had caused. 

“How could you do this?!” He roared. The two blonds shared a glance. 

“Buck, you don’t know what he’s done.” Steve took a step forward, his face covered with confusion and a little doubt.   
“I don’t care what he’s done! He could’ve tried for world domination for all I care! You don’t bind magic users in the same way that you don’t cut off someone’s legs!” Bucky seethed with rage from the floor, holding the dark haired man closer still to his chest. “You pretend to be moral,” He spat. “And yet you bind a magic user, either of you. How do you consider yourselves better than everyone else if you can’t see what this does to him?!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright, then. That was fun, to say the least. I bet you thought that this was going to be a funny chapter. probably one where Bucky was nursed at bedside. Well, you were half right.   
> Much love,  
> Clementine


End file.
